Room Service
by wrldpossibility
Summary: This is an alt-ending to the hotel room scene in To Love and Die in LA  one I'm sure has been done before : what if Castle had still been standing there?


Title: Room Service

Author: wrldpossibility

Fandom: Castle

Characters: Castle/Beckett

Word Count: 1400

Warning: Spoilers for 3.22, To Love and Die in LA

Rating: PG-13

Summary: He's still standing in the center of the room, looking right at her as she emerges.

Author's Note: This is an alt-ending to the hotel room scene in To Love and Die in LA (one I'm sure has been done before): what if Castle had still been standing there when Beckett opened that door? Oh, and for those new here, my journal is friends only, but friends are welcome! This fic will remain open a few days, then close.

Room Service

She'll never understand how it happens (nor why it continues to surprise her): one minute it's business as usual, and the next, ithump:/i she's dropped right on her ass into something so deep, so completely heavy, she has no hope of clawing her way out.

On the couch of the suite, with the little evidence they'd gathered littering the table and the light from the full kitchen hurting her eyes, time has stopped still.

"Even now, after spending all this time with you, I'm amazed by the depths of your strength, your heart...and your hotness."

Even with the tease tossed in, she's drowning. There's something about Castle's face when he does this—when he lays something like this on her—that grabs her and holds and won't let go. He's part snake charmer, part terrier, leaving her both mesmerized and fighting her way free.

His secret has something to do with his killer eye contact, so she breaks it, feeling only marginally more like herself as she answers.

"You're not so bad yourself, Castle."

When she looks back up, he's both man and boy, confident and eager and hopeful and in _waaaay_ over his head all at once. And it makes Kate want to reach out and just…who knows! Touch him or tackle him or smother him with something. Herself, maybe.

Since she can't very well do that, she makes as graceful an exit as she can muster.

On the other side of the door, the smooth metal is cool through the filmy shirt on her back. She leans against it…one second, two, five, ten. It's not soothing. Instead, her pulse is racing, her stomach hurts, she's sweating. Just minutes ago, she'd felt relaxed with him…lazy, almost, in a way that had stubbornly refused to acknowledge the reason they're here. Maybe it was all the sunshine of the day, or her more casual clothes; she suspects it had everything to do with the lack of the shield on her hip. She feels naked without it.

But if:_ she feels naked without it_, and she's been: _more comfortable with Castle today than ever before_…that would mean…something it shouldn't.

And now she's alone...again. He's gotten her all worked up with no where to go and she's alone with it all and g_oddammit, Castle!_ She hates this god-awful suite with its god-awful glitter and glam and eternal sunshine.

She turns the handle of the door before she can talk herself back down.

He's still standing in the center of the room, looking right at her as she emerges. At first she thinks he must have been staring at the door since she left, but there's a glass tumbler in his hand, and she hopes to god it's filled with scotch instead of water. His expression is once again expectant.

She strides right past him. "I'm hungry."

She's pissed off, is what she is, though god knows why. Castle seems to be trying to work out the same question, but if he thinks she can offer any insight, he's in for serious disappointment.

He sets the glass down, reaches for the phone. "Sure. Let me just—"

"Forget it." She picks up the glass, brings it to her lips. It iis/i scotch. She takes a long drink, clenching her jaw to make sure he can't detect her reaction to the burn of it going down her throat.

When she glances back at him, Castle blinks. "I can get you another of those." As he crosses the room to the wet bar, he has the air of a man flying by the seat of his pants. The sight of it fills her with a giddy satisfaction.

Three scotches later, she's smiling again. Laughing actually, or at least someone is; the sound's echoing in her ears and bouncing around the room. She can't quite remember what she was so angry about, and she can't quite remember what she's been so sad about, and she can't quite remember what she's always so goddamned serious about, and it feels good.

She wants to feel even better.

One more scotch, and god help her, she wants this to happen. Her brain is screaming _yes, now, yes, now_, and her body must be obeying, because the palms of her hands are brushing Castle's cheeks then drawing him to her and with a thrill, she's kissing him. She can feel the surprise in him; his startled breath against her mouth, the flexing and then yielding of his arms bracing first himself against the cushions and then the back of her head.

Everything starts off fast, fast, fast like a top spinning and his mouth is hard on hers and his hands have curled around the nape of her neck and the side of her jaw and the scotch is a buzz in her ears and a tingling in her fingers and toes, but as quickly as it starts, something is stopping. Something is slowing down with a screech in her head like a train on a track, and it takes her too long to realize it's Castle who's applied the brakes. He's softening his kiss and then he's backing away and then he's just sitting there, looking at her, and what the hell? She dips her face to his again, and he doesn't pull away, but he's not meeting her halfway either, and as she reaches for him, something on his face warns her off. The implication shoots through her brain like a migraine: _it's not what he wants._

She drops her hands to her lap.

Is it even what _she_ wants? Because she sure can't figure out when. She can't figure out how.

She leans back against the couch cushions. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Castle do the same. She stays very still. Her head hurts. Her stomach hurts. The room is spinning. She lets her hand come up to cradle her head. Is he still sitting beside her? The couch is tipping. Is he there? She can't look. She can't lift her head. She can't bear it.

She hasn't eaten since she snagged a pear and a bottle of Evian on the Zenith set hours ago, and she suddenly knows that if she doesn't do something about that, and soon, she's going to be sick.

When he reaches back out to her, her heart takes off sprinting again with a horrible lurch. _Not again._ She's mumbling it, shaking her head in her hands. She just wants to say no…no to this pain, no to this this churning in her gut, no to the look on his face that makes her feel turned inside out. He takes the hand she has clasped to her brow in both of his; it takes some doing, but he's firm. Once he's succeeded, he just holds it a moment. It brings her head up, her eyes to his. Suddenly she's reminded that just an hour before, he'd called her a mystery he was never going to solve.

Something else swims to the surface of her mind. Something hard to hear, even through the roar of humiliation and alcohol. _He said something to me that I've never heard from a man before….no._

No to Natalie. No to Nikki.

No to her.

No to the whole goddamed trinity.

Castle's face is doing something funny. She'd thought he was fine, he's still nursing his first scotch, but he looks slightly ill. "No," he agrees, and she's left wondering how he does that...pluck a conversation straight from her head. "But you'll tell me when, right?" His hands are trapping hers, his voice a hoarse whisper. "I'll be the first to know?"

She stares at him; she's terrified she's going to cry. After a moment, he lets her go.

He stands up, but she keeps her eyes on the couch cushions until she hears the click of his door, then reaches for the throw blanket folded neatly at the foot of the oversized ottoman. She curls up in a ball, her knees to her chest. She can't return to her room now.

It would feel too much like retreat.


End file.
